http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/04/doj_investgates_mpeg_la_over_vp8_attackThe US Department of Justice is investigating MPEG-LA – the patent pool organization backed by Apple, Microsoft, and others – over the organization's effort to undermine the royalty-free V8 codec Google introduced last year, according to a report citing people familiar with the matter.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the DoJ has launched a formal antitrust probe into whether MPEG-LA or its members are trying to stunt the growth of VP8 by creating legal uncertainty around the open source technology. In May, after Google open sourced the V8 codec under a royalty-free license and rolled it into a new web media format known as WebM, MPEG-LA chief executive Larry Horn said the organization was looking into the formation of a patent-pool license for VP8 and WebM. And last month, the organization made an official public call to patent holders, asking them to submit patents that may be essential to Google's codec.
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Patents were created to encourage progress in the technical arts, not suppress them. I'd like to see corporations that are clearly impeding progress and abusing the patent system for profits not in the public interest crushed by anti-trust actions and eminent domain proceedings.